


United We Stand, Divided We Fall

by idelthoughts



Series: Tumblr Ask Box Fic [13]
Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Reveal, the Morgan family - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 22:05:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4581843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idelthoughts/pseuds/idelthoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1959, and the guilt of dragging his family away from their lives over and over again is starting to wear on Henry.  He wonders if it would be better if he left without them.  Instead, he ends up having a long-overdue conversation with his son about why their life is the way it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	United We Stand, Divided We Fall

**Author's Note:**

> For the anon prompt: _Henry and Abigail: "I don't care. If it will save you, I'll do it."_
> 
> Rochester, NY - 1959

They’d only just felt settled in.  Henry loved his job at the practice, and Abigail’s position at the nursing home was pleasant.  It wasn’t the bustling pace of hospital work, but it worked well enough.  
  
Abe loved his school, and had begun to make friends.  After the heartbreak of leaving Manhattan in a rush, fleeing the war vet who’d recognized Henry, Abe had been sullen and withdrawn.  However, as social as he was, he’d bounced back quickly.  He was fast friends with a gaggle of youngsters, all of them frequently pounding up and down the stairs of their apartment building, running wild in the street until dusk.  
  
All of which made it all the harder to think that tonight it all would change again.  
  
Abigail had a late shift, and Henry had gone to bring her dinner.  She was in the lounge with several of the patients—one of whom recognized Henry.  Loud proclamations of Henry Morgan, MD, who had tirelessly treated the residents of the lower east side tenements during the tuberculosis epidemic in 1907.  
  
Just as typhus had thirty years before, the tuberculosis epidemic took its toll. In the years after his old friend James’ death, Henry had struggled to help control the rampant disease running roughshod over the immigrant population.    
  
Oh, the old man had been most complimentary about Henry’s service to the community in that time.  Loudly complimentary, speaking of the miracle angel that had saved his two boys, and now had come to visit him again, still as vital as the day he’d visited his tenement over fifty years prior.  A miracle, he’d said over and over, that Dr. Morgan should be so preserved to heal the sick.  
  
Abigail had gently shushed the old man and taken him back to his room while Henry, chuckling awkwardly as the nursing home folks looked on with idle curiosity, fled.  
  
At home, his head buzzing with the need to run, and run now, Henry had settled Abe in for bed.  Abe, exhausted from an evening game of baseball with his friends but bright-eyed with joy over winning the game, quickly fell asleep.    
  
Henry sat for some time in the silent apartment, head in his hands.    
  
Time and time again, it came to this.  Find a place, settle, leave.  Now the cycle began again.  
  
It hadn’t seemed so bad at first, with Abigail as his young bride, full of energy, and Abe a babe in arms content to go where his parents would take him.  
  
Now, each uprooting was exhausting.  Cruel, even.  He wasn’t certain he could do it again.  
  
When Abigail made it home from her shift, Henry already had a suitcase on the bed, half-packed with clothes.  She spoke quietly so as not to disturb Abe in the neighbouring bedroom.  
  
“He’s an old man, Henry.  Confused.  You needn’t worry.”  
  
“Abigail, he knew things about me, things that—“  
  
“Things that others don’t know!  Henry, they won’t believe him.  Stay clear of the nursing home, and it will be fine!  We don’t have to leave.”  
  
“Abigail, please.  I can’t…”  Henry ran his hands over his face, despairing, then dropped them to his sides.  “I should go this time.”  
  
She furrowed her brow, pausing.  She glanced at the single suitcase on the bed.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
 “I mean me.  Just me.”  
  
Abigail stared at him in stony silence, her lips thinning as she pressed them together.  Abruptly she left the bedroom for the kitchen.  Henry followed her so they could continue the discussion without disturbing Abe.  When he joined her, she was already prepared for battle, arms folded and pacing the kitchen floor.  
  
“How does that solve anything?”  Abigail asked as soon as he entered the room.  
  
“I can’t keep taking Abe away from everything he knows,”  Henry said, voicing the thoughts that had been racing through his mind all night.  “How will he feel to lose his life, his school, his friends all over again?”  
  
“And how will he feel to lose his father?”  Abigail demanded.  
  
“I’ll come back, it’s not as if—“  
  
“When will you come back?  How long is long enough?”  
  
“I don’t know, I—“  
  
“Will you tell him that you don’t age before you go?”  Abigail asked, stabbing a finger out towards the front door.   “Will you come back five, ten years later, to a teenager who sees his father the same as the day he left?  Is _that_ how he finds out you’re immortal?”  
  
“That has nothing to do with this, Abigail,”  Henry insisted.    
  
Her sharp words were like bullets.  It was an old argument, brought into this one—when to tell Abe, and how.  Henry had put it off, but after dragging Abe away from his life two years prior, Abigail had begun to insist their son should know the realities of his family.  
  
“It has _everything_ to do with this, Henry!  What kind of effect will that cruelty have on him, and how can you judge it easier than us all moving again?  For a man almost two hundred years old, you can be incredibly obtuse!”  
  
Her cheeks were pink, her expression dark and furious.  They seldom fought, and even when they did she rarely lost her temper, but it was well and truly stoked now.  Henry’s guilt boiled up and over, spilling out of him in a frantic rush.  
  
“I’m sorry!”  he cried.  “I don’t want to leave Abe—or you, neither of you.  I never want that, ever.  But I—I don’t know what to do.  I burden you both, unforgivably.  This is not the life either of you deserve!”  
  
Abigail bit her lip, suddenly silent.  Henry gulped a breath to calm himself, awaiting her response.  
  
“Oh, Henry.  You foolish, foolish man.”    
  
She came over to him and put her hands to his face.  He bowed his head, relaxing into her touch, but the tight knot of fear and guilt in his chest was suffocating him.  It took him a moment, but he managed to regain his voice.  
  
“Abigail,” he said, taking her hands and pulling them to his chest, cradling them to his heart.  “I can’t keep taking you both away from your lives, just because of something that is only a danger to me.”  
  
“I don’t care,”  a soft voice interjected.  “If it will save you, I’ll do it.”  
  
Both of them spun to see Abe’s face poked around the corner from the hall.  He was on his hands and knees on the carpeted floor.  No longer asleep in his bed, but instead listening to their discussion—their argument—overhearing content that had not been obfuscated in the least.  Henry, wound up and already emotional, took a swift step towards him.  
  
“How long have you been listening?”  Henry asked sharply.    
  
Henry’s voice shook as he asked the question.  He was frightened, he realized with cold shock—of all things, frightened of his own _son_.  Frightened of what Abe might know, and what he’d have to explain.  
  
Abigail slipped her hand into Henry’s and squeezed it, then released him and walked past him to Abe.  
  
“Darling, come here.”    
  
She beckoned to Abe, who, after a moment’s hesitation lifted himself up from his position on the floor and let her take his hand.  She brought him back to Henry, but Abe wouldn’t look up from the floor.  
  
“Are you angry?”  Abe whispered.  
  
Abe, at thirteen, was in turns the budding teenager intent on independence and insolence, and the sweet-natured, dependent child in search of reassurance and shelter.  Now, frightened by the argument, his growing, gawky form clad in flannel pyjamas, Henry could only see the tiny child he’d once cradled in his arms to soothe away his troubles.  Henry closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to collect himself.    
  
If only it were so easy now.  
  
“No, I’m not angry."  Abe deserved better than to suffer at the hands of Henry’s fraying nerves.  
  
“Let’s sit,”  Abigail suggested.  “I think we should have a family discussion.”  
  
They settled on the couch, Abe between them.  Abe cuddled to Abigail’s side and she put her arms around him, kissing him on the head.  He accepted the affection which he often turned away with a wrinkled nose and grumbling protest these days.  She rubbed Abe’s back and shot Henry a significant look indicating he should say something.  Henry wasn’t sure where to begin, but Abe beat him to it.  
  
“Are you going to leave us?”  It was clear that Abe was trying his best not to cry.    
  
Henry was gutted by Abe’s fear.  He shuffled so he was to Abe’s side, able to put his arms around both him and Abigail.  
  
“No,” he sighed.  And he knew it in that moment—he couldn’t leave them, and never would.  “No, I’m not.”  
  
“If it’s not safe to stay, I don’t mind going.  It’s not that bad to move.”  
  
Warmed by the innocent sincerity of Abe’s offer, Henry stroked his sleep-wild hair with a smile.  He shuffled back a little so Abe was not crushed, the three of them comfortably snuggled together.  
  
“How much of the conversation did you overhear, love?”  Abigail asked.  Abe didn’t answer, and Henry and Abigail exchanged a look before Abigail prodded him again.  “It’s alright.  We only need to know so we can best explain.”  
  
Abe didn’t answer, only blinking, until his eyes slid over to Henry.  
  
“Are you really two hundred years old?” he asked.  
  
Henry looked to Abigail, who nodded imperceptibly.  Henry returned his attention to Abe and his unguarded question.  
  
“Yes,”  Henry rasped, then cleared his throat, striving for some good humour.  “Well, almost.  One hundred and eighty.  Don’t rush me.”  
  
Abigail huffed a small laugh, and Abe smiled tentatively.  
  
Henry chewed at his bottom lip, watching his son passively accept his words with trust and faith.    
  
There was nothing to fear here, he realized.  Whatever dangers there were in this world, they lay outside his family.  He’d be a fool to do anything to risk this.  The pressures and burdens might be because of him, but they affected them all, and it was past time Abe understood the reason for it.  
  
“Well, Abe.  I suppose you should know the whole story,”  Henry said quietly, stroking Abe’s head once more.  “It’s a long one.  Think you’re up for it tonight?”  
  
Abe nodded, eyes wide.  Likely he wouldn’t be able to settle back to sleep for some time.  
  
“Then, I suppose, we should start at the beginning.”  
  
Abigail smiled at him as Henry began to talk, quiet pride shining in her eyes.


End file.
